Hallelujah, Hallelujah!

I wonder how many people out there truly know what the word Hallelujah means. No, don’t google it if you don’t already know. Not yet anyway.

Hallelujah, or Alleluia, is only found in the bible four times. All occur in Revelation 19.

1And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying,

Alleluia;

Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God:

2For true and righteous are his judgments:

for he hath judged the great whore,

which did corrupt the earth with her fornication,

and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.

3And again they said,

Alleluia

And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.

4And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia.

5And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great.

6And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

*emphasis mine

Now, Hallelujah is a Greek word taken from two Hebrew words. (הָלַל) Ha’lal and ( יָהּ) Jah. In essence, ha’lal means being praise worthy, boastful (I’m thinking boastful does not mean boasting in self, but boasting of others), commend, and (I love this one) to shine.

What about Jah? I know many of you have heard the word Jehovah. Jah is short for Jehovah. And according to the Lexicon Jehovah is not only the proper name of the one true God, but is means the existing one. Check out Blue Letter Bible for yourself.

If you add Ha’lal and Jah together you get Ha’lalJah or Hallelujah! Praise Jehovah! Praise the one true God! Praise the Existing One!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

I suppose you’re wondering what brought this on. For the last several weeks whenever I hear someone praying, or when I’m feeling like I want to get out of sorts I start singing Hallelujah. No, not the song everyone knows in Shrek (although that’s a blog for another day, hopefully tomorrow).

Mine goes something more like this.

Ah-lay-loo0-ya, ah-lay-looo-ya

Ah-lay-looo-ya, ah-lay-loo-ooo-ya

Ah-lay-loo-ya, ah-lay-looooo-ya

Lord, we praaaaise you, Lord, we praaa-aaaise you!

And so forth. It’s an invitation to the Lord to make His presence known in our lives. It brings peace and comfort. Try it with a sincere heart. Sing it over and over and see what happens.

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One thought on “Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”

I found you posted something at muse and followed your link. . . . I’m glad I did because only recently was I asking myself the questions “When I sing “hallelujah” what am I really saying? Do people really know (we do “A New hallelujah” by MW Smith at church). Sometimes what seems to be so basic needs to be revisited so the words have meaning that we can sink our teeth into (glory is another one I think most of us don’t truly “get”). Anyway – thanks for this post! Oh, and Nice meeting you! 🙂